– Could be tonight, could be a couple nights. Depends on when they can get him safe passage.
Couple nights.
– So maybe you can call him?
– He doesn't want us calling him up there. He thinks the Coalition may have some people inside a couple of the service providers. They could tap landlines and cell signals. He's worried they might find out when and how he's coming back down. Sounds a little paranoid to me, like maybe he's been listening to Tom, but why take the chance.
– Yeah, that's great, Lydia, but see, there's this girl out there that I need to find.
– Woman.
– No, girl. The kind young enough to get raped by her daddy.
She comes a little closer to the door.
I don't know much about Lydia, but I know enough. I know that just a couple years back she was at NYU, finishing her thesis on Radical Gender Roles. I know she was a big player in campus politics. I know she used to teach women's self-defense classes. I also know a desperate Rogue tried to jump her one night and got eye-gouged and groin-punched for his trouble. But not before he bit a hole in her cheek. What I hear, it turned out she knew some people that she didn't even know she knew. They noticed when she started getting sick. Guess these friends got her through and hooked her up with Terry. I think the biggest shock for her was discovering that Vyrus-infected lesbians and gays were completely unorganized. She took care of that.
She's a tough enough nut, but she's young. Literally young, under twenty-five. She's still soft on the inside, still holding the values and feelings she had before she was infected. Hell, most everybody does. Then they grow up, or they die.
– So why do you care, Joe?
– Truth is, I don't. Just a job to me. But I figure you probably care
– You're a piece of work, Joe.
– Little girl out there, no one to help her.
– A real motherfucker.
– All alone.
– So tell me where she is, I'll help her.
– Don't know where she is. That's why I need out of here. So I can find out.
– How you planning to do that?
– Gonna beat on a guy.
– So tell me the guy's name, I'll beat on him.
– Yeah, I know you'd be into that. Thing is, the guy lives above
Fourteenth. And he's connected. You go up there, hand a beating to this guy, could be political repercussions.
– I see that. But there's another thing.
– Yeah?
– I got no reason to believe you. How about that, Joe? Any reason I should be listening to this? -I got a reason to lie? Say it's crap and you let me out. Where am I gonna go? I leave the neighborhood and I'm dust. I stay in the neighborhood and you guys can pick me up whenever you want. Where do I run?
– Uptown.
– Any deals I have with those guys only work 'cause I'm down here. I try to live above Fourteenth and suddenly I'm not so useful. You hear what Dexter Predo does when someone stops being useful?
– Yeah.
– Well it ain't no lie.
She's quiet again. -She's fourteen, Lydia. And her name's Amanda.
I work my fingers into my jacket pocket. They took my gun, my knife, my works and the blood I tapped, but the picture's there. I take it out and slip it under the door.
– That's what she looks like.
The trailing corner of the picture disappears as Lydia picks it up. There's nothing but the sound of her breathing and Hurley turning the page of a newspaper, and the Vyrus whispering pain and hunger in my veins. The picture slides back under the door.
– You know what you shouldn't have done, Joe?
– What?
– You shouldn't have tapped that woman last night. That was rape, Joe, and I don't deal with rapists.
She walks away from the door.
– I'm going upstairs, Hurley. If this asshole starts trying to soften you up with some shit about a little girl, don't listen to him.
– Shite, Lydia, Joe knows better den ta try an soff-soap me.
He's right, I do. And that leaves me alone in the closet with no one to talk to except you know who.
It's not a very rich or enlightening conversation. Mostly it's just the Vyrus chanting: feed, feed, feed over and over again, and me replying with: make it stop, make it stop, make it stop. Pretty boring stuff. I also do my fair share of groaning and sweating as I clutch at my cramping stomach and occasionally bang the back of my head against the floor. Imagine the worst case of food poisoning you've ever had. It's like that except it hurts more and you don't have the relief of shitting or vomiting. But it comes in waves. So from time to time I get a little break where I can lie there and think about the next series of cramps and remember that this is just the start and that it will get much worse. And that has me worried, because it shouldn't even be this bad yet. I should have had at least another day before this kind of pain started. All I can figure is that the dose Horde gave me put more of a whammy on my system than I knew. Throw in the cuts I got from Vale, my sunburn, and the beating Hurley gave me, and I guess I've been overdoing it a bit. The Vyrus is tired and grouchy, like a small child kept up too late. For now it's just whining, soon it will start to cry. And then the shrieking and the tantrums will begin.
Pause while a mongoose crawls through my lower intestine.
I've been here before. I know I can take it. I know the cramps will get worse and then subside into a constant pain that I'll be able to cope with pretty well. After that things will start to get interesting. After that I'll be approaching the frontier of my personal experience. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Jorge comes to mind. I need to distract myself.
– Hurley. Hey, Hurl!
– Yeah?
– What's, what's the longest you ever went?
– Me?
– I don't mean the other guy named Hurley that's out there with you.
– Ya gotta mouth, Joe.
– Yeah, forgive me, I'm a little tense.
– Yeah, s'tuff, ain't it?
– Uh-huh. So what's the longest?
– Almost two weeks once.
– No shit.
– Yep.
– What happened?
– Shouldn't oughta be talkin' wit' ya, Joe.
– Jesus, Hurl, what the fuck can it hurt? Oh, God!
Return of the mongoose.
– Ya OK, Joe?
– No.
– OK.
– So two weeks, huh?
– Yeah.
– What happened?
He doesn't say anything. I press my face close to one of the cracks at the edge of the door.
– C'mon, man, I'm just trying to take my mind off the cramps.
His chair scrapes as he shifts.
– OK. Dis wuz way back. Sure ya wanta hear dis?
– Yeah, yeah.
– OK. Way back. I wuz workin' fer some bootleggers. Way back. Stuff would come in onna water, onta Long Island. I did da muscle, rode shotgun like.
– Some things don't change.
– Well ya gotta talent ya gotta stick wid it.
– Sure.
– Anyhows, no big ting, da boats is runnin' up onna shore an da guys is takin' da booze off an' we get hit.
– Another outfit?
– Naw. Law.
– Same thing.
– No lie. Specially dese coppers. Dese wuz da ones we had paid off so's we could work da beach. Decided dey'd sooner handle distribution demselves like. Did'nae even give a warnin', jus opened up. Tommy guns. Ya been shot much, Joe?
– Once or twice.
– Hurts, doan it? Kee-rist! Got me good. Riddled up me legs and me belly. Fellas got me inna car an blasted us out. Foockin' cops had a roadblock a mile up. Got us good. Blew da rig right off da road. I went out da winshield, so I missed it when dey trew a grenade inna winda. Blew dose guys ta hell. Too bad, good guys.
– What about you?
– Me? Flew twenny yards when da car crashed. Landed inna culvert next ta one a dem steel drainpipes. Used me arms ta drag meself inta it. Den, just passed out like. Time I came to, cops wuz all gone.